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NO AND YES 



NO AND YES 



BY 

MARY BAKER EDDY 

It 
AUTHOR OF SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO 

THE SCRIPTURES 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 
Published by Allison V. Stewart 

FOR THE TRUSTEES UNDER THE WILL OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY 

Falmouth and St. Paul Streets 
1917 



^c^ 



Authorized Literature of 

The First Church of Christ, Scientist 

in Boston, Massachusetts 






Copyright, i8qi, igo8 
By Mary Baker G. Eddy 



All rights reserved 



PREFACE 

TT was the purpose of each edition of this pamphlet to 
benefit no favored class, but, according to the apostle's 
admonition, to *' reprove, rebuke, exhort," and with the 
power and self-sacrificing spirit of Love to correct invol- 
untary as well as voluntary error. 

By a modification of the language, the import of this 
edition is, we trust, transparent to the hearts of all con- 
scientious laborers in the realm of Mind-healing. To 
those who are athirst for the life-giving waters of a true 
divinity, it saith tenderly, " Come and drink ; " and if 
you are babes in Christ, leave the meat and take the 
unadulterated milk of the Word, until you grow to 
apprehend the pure spirituality of Truth. 

MARY BAKER EDDY 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Preface ......... v 

Introduction i 

Disease Unreal 4 

Science of Mind-healing 7 

Is Christian Science of the Same Lineage as 

Spiritualism or Theosophy? 13 

Is Christian Science from Beneath, and not 

FROM Above? 14 

Is Christian Science Pantheistic? 15 

Is Christian Science Blasphemous? 18 

Is There a Personal Deity? 19 

Is There a Personal Devil? 22 

Is Man a Person? 25 

Has Man a Soul? 28 

Is Sin Forgiven? 30 

Is There any such Thing as Sin? 32 

Is There no Sacrificial Atonement? • • • • 33 

Is There no Intercessory Prayer? . . . , . 38 

Should Christians Beware of Christian Science? 41 

vii 



NO AND YES 



INTRODUCTION 

npO kindle in all minds a common sentiment of regard 
^ for the spiritual idea emanating from the infinite, is 
a most needful work; but this must be done gradually, for 
Truth is as "the still, small voice," which comes to our 
recognition only as our natures are changed by its silent 
influence. 

Small streams are noisy and rush precipitately; and 
babbling brooks fill the rivers till they rise in floods, de- 
molishing bridges and overwhelming cities. So men, when 
thrilled by a new idea, are sometimes impatient; and, 
when public sentiment is aroused, are liable to be borne 
on by the current of feeling. They should then turn tem- 
porarily from the tumult, for the silent cultivation of the 
true idea and the quiet practice of its virtues. When 
the noise and stir of contending sentiments cease, and 
the flames die away on the mount of revelation, we can 
read more clearly the tablets of Truth. 

The theology and medicine of Jesus were one, — in the 
divine oneness of the trinity. Life, Truth, and Love, which 
healed the sick and cleansed the sinful. This trinity in 

unity, correcting the individual thought, is the only Mind- 

1 



2 NO AND YES 

healing I vindicate; and on its standard have emblazoned 
that crystallized expression, Christian Science. 

A spurious and hydra-headed mind-healing is naturally 
glared at by the pulpit, ostracized by the medical faculty, 
and scorned by people of common sense. To aver that 
disease is normal, a God-bestowed and stubborn reality, 
but that you can heal it, leaves you to work against that 
which is natural and a law of being. It is scientific to rob 
disease of all reality; and to accomplish this, you cannot 
begin by admitting its reality. Our Master taught his 
students to deny self, sense, and take up the cross. Men- 
tal healers who admit that disease is real should be made 
to test the feasibility of what they say by healing one case 
audibly, through such an admission, — if this is possible. 
I have healed more disease by the spoken than the un- 
spoken word. 

The honest student of Christian Science is modest in his 
claims and conscientious in duty, waiting and working to 
mature what he has been taught. Institutes furnished 
with such teachers are becoming beacon-lights along the 
shores of erudition; and many who are not teachers have 
large practices and some marked success in healing the 
most defiant forms of disease. 

Dishonesty destroys one's ability to heal mentally. Con- 
ceit cannot avert the effects of deceit. Taking advantage 
of the present ignorance in relation to Christian Science 
Mind-healing, many are fiooding our land with conflict- 
ing theories and practice. We should not spread abroad 



NO AND YES 3 

patchwork ideas that in some vital points lack Science. 
How sad it is that envy will bend its bow and shoot its 
arrow at the idea which claims only its inheritance, is nat- 
urally modest, generous, and sincere! while the trespass- 
ing error murders either friend or foe who stands in its 
way. Truly it is better to fall into the hands of God, than 
of man. 

When I revised "Science and Health with Key to the 
Scriptures," in 1878, some irresponsible people insisted 
that my manual of the practice of Christian Science Mind- 
healing should not be made public; but I obeyed a diviner 
rule. People dependent on the rules of this practice for 
their healing, not having lost the Spirit which sustains the 
genuine practice, will put that book in the hands of their 
patients, whom it will heal, and recommend it to their 
students, whom it would enlighten. Every teacher must 
pore over it in secret, to keep himself well informed. The 
Nemesis of the history of Mind-healing notes this hour. 

Dishonesty necessarily stultifies the spiritual sense which 
Mind-healers specially need; and which they must pos- 
sess, in order to be safe members of the community. How 
good and pleasant a thing it is to seek not so much thine 
own as another's good, to sow by the wayside for the way- 
weary, and trust Love's recompense of love. 

Plagiarism from my writings is so common it is be- 
coming odious to honest people; and such compilations, 
instead of possessing the essentials of Christian Science, 
are tempting and misleading. 



4 NO AND YES 

Reading Science and Health has restored the sick to 
health; but the task of learning thoroughly the Science 
of Mind-healing and demonstrating it understandingly 
had better be undertaken in health than sickness. 



Disease Unreal 

Disease is more than imagination; it is a human error, 
a constituent part of what comprise the whole of mortal 
existence, — namely, material sensation and mental delu- 
sion. But an erring sense of existence, or the error of 
belief, named disease, never made sickness a stubborn 
reality. On the ground that harmony is the truth of be- 
ing, the Science of Mind-healing destroys the feasibility 
of disease; hence error of thought becomes fable instead 
of fact. Science demonstrates the reality of Truth and 
the unreality of the error. A self-evident proposition, in 
the Science of Mind-healing, is that disease is unreal; 
and the efficacy of my system, beyond other systems of 
medicine, vouches for the validity of that statement. Sin 
and disease are not scientific, because they embody not 
the idea of divine Principle, and are not the phenomena 
of the immutable laws of God; and they do not arise 
from the divine consciousness and true constituency of 
being. 

The unreality of sin, disease, and death, rests on the 
exclusive truth that being, to be eternal, must be harmo- 
nious. All disease must be — and can only be — healed 



NO AND YES 5 

on this basis. All true Christian Scientists are vindicat- 
ing, feariessly and honestly, the Principle of this grand 
verity of Mind-healing. 

In erring mortal thought the reality of Truth has an 
antipode, — the reality of error; and disease is one of the 
severe realities of this error. God has no opposite in 
Science. To Truth there is no error. As Truth alone is 
real, then it follows that to declare error real would be to 
make it Truth. Disease arises from a false and material 
sense, from the belief that matter has sensation. There- 
fore this material sense, which is untrue, is of necessity 
unreal. Moreover, this unreal sense substitutes for Truth 
an unreal belief, — namely, that life and health are inde- 
pendent of God, and dependent on material conditions. 
Material sense also avers that Spirit, or Truth, cannot 
restore health and perpetuate life, but that material con- 
ditions can and do destroy both human health and life. 

If disease is as real as health, and is itself a state of 
being, and yet is arrayed against being, then Mind, or 
God, does not meddle with it. Disease becomes indeed a 
stubborn reality, and man is mortal. A "kingdom divided 
against itself is brought to desolation; ^^ therefore the mind 
that attacks a normal and real condition of man, is pro- 
fanely tampering with the realities of God and His laws. 
Metaphysical healing is a lost jewel in this misconception 
of reality. Any contradictory fusion of Truth with error, 
in both theory and practice, prevents one from healing 
scientifically, and makes the last state of one's patients 



6 NO AND YES 

worse than the first. If disease is real it is not illusive, 
and it certainly would contradict the Science of Mind- 
healing to attempt to destroy tjie realities of Mind in order 
to heal the sick. 

On the theory that God's formations are spiritual, har- 
monious, and eternal, and that God is the only creator, 
Christian Science refutes the validity of the testimony of 
the senses, which take cognizance of their own phenomena, 
— sickness, disease, and death. This refutation is indis- 
pensable to the destruction of false evidence, and the 
consequent cure of the sick, — as all understand who 
practise the true Science of Mind-healing. If, as the 
error indicates, the evidence of disease is not false, then 
disease cannot be healed by denying its validity; and this 
is why the mistaken healer is not successful, trying to heal 
on a material basis. 

The evidence that the earth is motionless and the sun 
revolves around our planet, is as sensible and real as the 
evidence for disease; but Science determines the evidence 
in both cases to be unreal. To material sense it is plain 
also that the error of the revolution of the sun around the 
earth is more apparent than the adverse but true Science 
of the stellar universe. Copernicus has shown that what 
appears real, to material sense and feeling, is absolutely 
unreal. Astronomy, optics, acoustics, and hydraulics are 
all at war with the testimony of the physical senses. This 
fact intimates that the laws of Science are mental, not 
material; and Christian Science demonstrates this. 



NO AND YES 



Science op Mind-healing 



The rule of divinity is golden; to be wise and true re- 
joices every heart. But evil influences waver the scales 
of justice and mercy. No personal considerations should 
allow any root of bitterness to spring up between Chris- 
tian Scientists, nor cause any misapprehension as to the 
motives of others. We must love our enemies, and con- 
tinue to do so unto the end. By the love of God we can 
cancel error in our own hearts, and blot it out of others. 

Sooner or later the eyes of smful mortals must be opened 
to see every error they possess, and the way out of it; and 
they will "flee as a bird to your mountain," away from 
the enemy of smning sense, stubborn will, and every im- 
perfection in the land of Sodom, and find rescue and refuge 
in Truth and Love. 

Every loving sacrifice for the good of others is known 
to God, and the wrath of man cannot hide it from Him. 
God has appointed for Christian Scientists high tasks, 
and will not release them from the strict performance of 
each one of them. The students must now fight their 
own battles. I recommend that Scientists draw no lines 
whatever between one person and another, but think, 
speak, teach, and write the truth of Christian Science 
without reference to right or wrong personality in this 
field of labor. Leave the distinctions of individual char- 
acter and the discriminations and guidance thereof to 



8 NO AND YES 

the Father, whose wisdom is unerring and whose love is 
universal. 

We should endeavor to be long-suffering, faithful, and 
charitable with all. To this small effort let us add one 
more privilege — namely, silence whenever it can substi- 
tute censure. Avoid voicing error; but utter the truth of 
God and the beauty of holiness, the joy of Love and "the 
peace of God, that passeth all understanding, '^ recom- 
mending to all men fellowship in the bonds of Christ. 
Advise students to rebuke each other always in love, as 
I have rebuked them. Having discharged this duty, coun- 
sel each other to work out his own salvation, without fear 
or doubt, knowing that God will make the wrath of man 
to praise Him, and that the remainder thereof He will 
restrain. We can rejoice that every germ of goodness will 
at last struggle into freedom and greatness, and every sin 
will so punish itself that it will bow down to the command- 
ments of Christ, — Truth and Love. 

I enjoin it upon my students to hold no controversy or 
enmity over doctrines and traditions, or over the miscon- 
ceptions of Christian Science, but to work, watch, and 
pray for the amelioration of sin, sickness, and death. If 
one be found who is too blind for instruction, no longer cast 
your pearls before this state of mortal mind, lest it turn 
and rend you; but quietly, with benediction and hope, 
let the unwise pass by, while you walk on in equanimity, 
and with increased power, patience, and understanding, 
gained from your forbearance. This counsel is not new, 



NO AND YES 9 

as my Christian students can testify; and if it had been 
heeded in times past it would have prevented, to a great 
extent, the factions which have sprung up among Scientists 
to the hindrance of the Cause of Truth. It is true that the 
mistakes, prejudices, and errors of one class of thinkers 
must not be introduced or established among another class 
who are clearer and more conscientious in their convic- 
tions; but this one thing can be done, and should be: let 
your opponents alone, and use no influence to prevent 
their legitimate action from their own standpoint of ex- 
perience, knowing, as you should, that God will well 
regenerate and separate wisely and finally; whereas you 
may err in effort, and lose your fruition. 

Hoping to pacify repeated complaints and murmurings 
against too great leniency, on my part, towards some of 
my students who fall into error, I have opposed occa- 
sionally and strongly — especially in the first edition of 
this little work — existing wrongs of the nature referred 
to. But I now point steadfastly to the power of grace to 
overcome evil with good. God will "furnish a table in 
the wilderness ^^ and show the power of Love. 

Science is not the shibboleth of a sect or the caba- 
listic insignia of philosophy; it excludes all error and 
includes all Truth. More mistakes are made in its name 
than this period comprehends. Divinely defined. Science 
is the atmosphere of God; humanly construed, and ac- 
cording to Webster, it is "knowledge, duly arranged and 
referred to general truths and principles on which it is 



10 NO AND YES 

founded, and from which it is derived/^ I employ this 
awe-filled word in both a divine and human sense; but 
I insist that Christian Science is demonstrably as true, 
relative to the unseen verities of being, as any proof that 
can be given of the completeness of Science. 

The two largest words in the vocabulary of thought are 
"Christian" and "Science." The former is the highest 
style of man; the latter reveals and interprets God and 
man; it aggregates, amplifies, unfolds, and expresses the 
ALL-God. The life of Christ is the predicate and postu- 
late of all that I teach, and there is but one standard 
statement, one rule, and one Principle for all scientific 
truth. 

My hygienic system rests on Mind, the eternal Truth. 
What is termed matter, or relates to its so-called attributes, 
is a self -destroying error. When a so-called material sense 
is lost, and Truth restores that lost sense, — on the basis 
that all consciousness is Mind and eternal, — the former 
position, that sense is organic and material, is proven 
erroneous. 

The feasibility and immobility of Christian Science 
unveil the true idea, — namely, that earth's discords have 
not the reality of Mind in the Science of being; and this 
idea — dematerializing and spiritualizing mortals — turns 
like the needle to the pole all hope and faith to God, based 
as it is on His omnipotence and omnipresence. 

Eternal harmony, perpetuity, and perfection, constitute 
the phenomena of being, governed by the immutable and 



NO AND YES 11 

eternal laws of God; whereas matter and human will, 
intellect, desire, and fear, are not the creators, controllers, 
nor destroyers of life or its harmonies. Man has an im- 
mortal Soul, a divine Principle, and an eternal being. 
Man has perpetual individuality; and God's laws, and 
their intelligent and harmonious action, constitute his in- 
dividuality in the Science of Soul. 

In its literary expression, my system of Christian meta- 
physics is hampered by material terms, which must be 
used to indicate thoughts that are to be understood meta- 
physically. As a Science, this system is held back by the 
common ignorance of what it is and what it does, and 
(worse still) by those who come falsely in its name. To 
be appreciated. Science must be understood and consci- 
entiously introduced. If the Bible and Science and Health 
had the place in schools of learning that physiology oc- 
cupies, they would revolutionize and reform the world, 
through the power of Christ. It is true that it requires 
more study to understand and demonstrate what these 
works teach, than to learn theology, physiology, or physics; 
because they teach divine Science, with fixed Principle, 
given rule, and unmistakable proof. 

Ancient and modern human philosophy are inadequate 
to grasp the Principle of Christian Science, or to demon- 
strate it. Revelation shows this Principle, and will rescue 
reason from the thrall of error. Revelation must subdue 
the sophistry of intellect, and spiritualize consciousness 
with the dictum and the demonstration of Truth and Love. 



12 NO AND YES 

Christian Science Mind-healing can only be gained by- 
working from a purely Christian standpoint. Then it 
heals the sick and exalts the race. The essence of this 
Science is right thinking and right acting — leading us to 
see spirituality and to be spiritual, to understand and to 
demonstrate God. 

The Massachusetts Metaphysical College and Church 
of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, were the outgrowth of the 
author's religious experience. After a lifetime of ortho- 
doxy on the platform of doctrines, rites, and ceremonies, 
it became a sacred duty for her to impart to others this 
new-old knowledge of God. 

The same affection, desire, and motives which have stim- 
ulated true Christianity in all ages, and given impulse to 
goodness, in or out of the Church, have nerved her pur- 
pose to build on the new-born conception of the Christ, as 
Jesus declared himself, — namely, "the way, the truth, 
and the life." Living a true life, casting out evil, healing 
the sick, and preaching the gospel of Truth, — these are 
the ends of Christianity. This divine way impels a spirit- 
ualization of thought and method, beyond doctrine and 
ritual; and in nothing else has she departed from the old 
landmarks. 

The unveiled spiritual signification of the Word so en- 
larges our sense of God that it makes both sense and Soul, 
man and Life, immaterial, though still individual. It re- 
moves all limits from divine power. God must be found 
all instead of a part of being, and man the reflection of 



NO AND YES 13 

His power and goodness. This Science rebukes sin with 
its own nothingness, and thus destroys sin quickly and 
utterly. It makes disease unreal, and this heals it. 

The demonstration of moral and physical growth, and a 
scientific deduction from the Principle of all harmony, de- 
clare both the Principle and idea to be divine. If this be 
true, then death must be swallowed up in Life, and the 
prophecy of Jesus fulfilled, "Whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die.'^ Though centuries passed 
after those words were originally uttered, before this re- 
appearing of Truth, and though the hiatus be longer still 
before that saying is demonstrated in Life that knows no 
death, the declaration is nevertheless true, and remains 
a clear and profound deduction from Christian Science. 

Is Christian Science of the Same Lineage as 
Spiritualism or Theosophy? 

Science is not susceptible of being held as a mere theory. 
It is hoary with time. It takes hold of eternity, voices the 
infinite, and governs the universe. No greater opposites 
can be conceived of, physically, morally, and spiritually, 
than Christian Science, spiritualism, and theosophy. 

Science and Health has effected a revolution in the 
minds of thinkers on the subject of mediumship, and given 
impulse to reason and revelation, goodness and virtue. A 
theory may be sound in spots, and sparkle like a diamond, 
while other parts of it have no lustre. Christian Science 



14 NO AND YES 

is sound in every part. It is neither warped nor miscon- 
ceived, when properly demonstrated. If a spiritualist 
medium understood the Science of Mind-healing, he 
would know that between those who have and those who 
have not passed the transition called death, there can be 
no interchange of consciousness, and that all sensible phe- 
nomena are merely subjective states of mortal mind. 

Theosophy is a corruption of Judaism. This corruption 
had a renewal in the Neoplatonic philosophy; but it sprang 
from the Oriental philosophy of Brahmanism, and blends 
with its magic and enchantments. Theosophy is no more 
allied to Christian Science than the odor of the upas-tree 
is to the sweet breath of springtide, or the brilliant cor- 
uscations of the northern sky are to solar heat and 
light. 

Is Christian Science from Beneath, and not 
FROM Above? 

Hear the words of our Master: "Go ye into all the 
world 'M "Heal the sick, cast out devils '\^ Christian 
Scientists, perhaps more than any other religious sect, are 
obeying these commands; and the injunctions are not 
confined to Jesus' students in that age, but they extend 
to this age, — to as many as shall believe on him. The 
demand and example of Jesus were not from beneath. 
Are frozen dogmas, persistent persecution, and the doc- 
trine of eternal damnation, from above? Are the dews 



NO AND YES 15 

of divine Truth, falling on the sick and sinner, to heal 
them, from beneath? "By their fruits ye shall know 
them/' 

Reading my books, without prejudice, would convince 
all that their purpose is right. The comprehension of my 
teachings would enable any one to prove these books to 
be filled with blessings for the whole human family. Fa- 
tiguing Bible translations and voluminous commentaries 
are employed to explain and prop old creeds, and they 
have the civil and religious arms in their defense; then 
why should not these be equally extended to support the 
Christianity that heals the sick? The notions of person- 
ality to be found in creeds are far more mystic than 
Mind-healing. It is no easy matter to believe there are 
three persons in one person, and that one person is cast 
out of another person. These conceptions of Deity and 
devil presuppose an impotent God and an incredible 
Satan. 

Is Christian Science Pantheistic? 

Christian Science refutes pantheism, finds Spirit neither 
in matter nor in the modes of mortal mind. It shows 
that matter and mortal mind have neither origin nor ex- 
istence in the eternal Mind. Thinking otherwise is what 
estranges mortals from divine Life and Love. God is 
All-in-all. He is Spirit; and in nothing is He unlike Him- 
self. Nothing that "worketh or maketh a lie'' is to be 



16 NO AND YES 

found in the divine consciousness. For God to know, 
is to be; that is, what He knows must truly and eternally 
exist. If He knows matter, and matter can exist in Mind, 
then mortality and discord must be eternal. He is Mind; 
and whatever He knows is made manifest, and must be 
Truth. 

If God knows evil even as a false claim, this knowledge 
would manifest evil in Him and proceeding from Him. 
Christian Science shows that matter, evil, sin, sickness, and 
death are but negations of Spirit, Truth, and Life, which 
are positives that cannot be gainsaid. The subjective 
states of evil, called mortal mind or matter, are negatives 
destitute of time and space; for there is none beside God 
or Spirit and the idea of Spirit. 

This infinite logic is the infinite light, — uncompre- 
hended, yet forever giving forth more light, because it 
has no darkness to emit. Mortals do not understand the 
All; hence their inference of some other existence beside 
God and His true likeness, — of something unlike Him. 
He who is All, understands all. He can have no knowl- 
edge or inference but His own consciousness, and can take 
in no more than all. 

The mists of matter — sin, sickness, and death — dis- 
appear in proportion as mortals approach Spirit, which 
is the reality of being. It is not enough to say that matter 
is the substratum of evil, and that its highest attenuation is 
mortal mind; for there is, strictly speaking, no mortal 
mind. Mind is immortal. Death is the consequent of an 



NO AND YES 17 

antecedent false assumption of the realness of something 
unreal, material, and mortal. If God knows the antece- 
dent, He must produce its consequences. From this logic 
there is no escape. Matter, or evil, is the absence of Spirit 
or good. Their nothingness is thus proven; for God is 
good, ever-present, and All. 

"In Him we live, and move, and have our being;" con- 
sequently it is impossible for the true man — who is a 
spiritual and individual being, created in the eternal 
Science of being — to be conscious of aught but good. 
God's image and likeness can never be less than a good 
man; and for man to be more than God's likeness is 
impossible. Man is the climax of creation; and God is 
not without an ever-present witness, testifying of Himself j 
Matter, or any mode of mortal mind, is neither part nor 
parcel of divine consciousness and God's verity. 

In Science there is no fallen state of being; for therein 
is no inverted image of God, no escape from the focal 
radiation of the infinite. Hence the unreality of error, 
and the truth of the Scripture, that there is "none beside 
Him." If mortals could grasp these two words all and 
nothing, this mystery of a God who has no knowledge of 
sin would disappear, and the eternal, infinite harmony 
would be fathomed. If God could know a false claim, 
false knowledge would be a part of His consciousness. 
Then evil would be as real as good, sickness as real as 
health, death as real as Life; and sickness, sin, and death 
would be as eternal as God. 



18 NO AND YES 



Is Christian Science Blasphemods? 

Blasphemy has never diminished sin and sickness, nor 
acknowledged God in all His ways. Blasphemy rebukes 
not the godless lie that denies Him as All-in-all, nor does 
it ascribe to Him all presence, power, and glory. Chris- 
tian Science does this. If Science lacked the proof of its 
origin in God, it would be self-destructive, for it rests alone 
on the demonstration of God's supremacy and omnipo- 
tence. Right thinking and right acting, physical and 
moral harmony, come with Science, and the secret of 
its presence lies in the universal need of better health and 
morals. 

Human theories, when weighed in the balance, are 
found unequal to the demonstration of divine Life and 
Love; and their highest endeavors are, to divine Science, 
what a child's love of pictures is to art. A child, in his 
ignorance, may imagine the face of Dante to be the rapt 
face of Jesus. Thus falsely may the human conceive of 
the Divine. If the schoolmaster is not Christ, the school 
gets things wrong, and knows it not; but the teacher is 
morally responsible. 

Good health and a more spiritual religion are the com- 
mon wants; and these wants have wrought this moral 
result, — that the so-called mortal mind asks for what 
Mind alone can supply. This demand militates against 
the so-called demands of matter, and regulates the present 



NO AND YES 19 

high premium on Mind-healing. If the uniform moral 
and spiritual, as well as physical, effects of Christian Sci- 
ence were lacking, the premium would go down. That 
it continues to rise, and the demand to increase, shows its 
real value to the race. Even doctors will agree that in- 
fidelity, ignorance, and quackery have never met the grow- 
ing wants of humanity. Christian Science is no "Boston 
craze;" it is the sober second thought of advancing 
humanity. 

Is There a Personal Deity? 

God is infinite. He is neither a limited mind nor a 
limited body. God is Love; and Love is Principle, not 
person. What the person of the infinite is, we know not; 
but we are gratefully and lovingly conscious of the f ather- 
liness of this Supreme Being. God is individual, and man 
is His individualized idea. While material man and the 
physical senses receive no spiritual idea, and feel no sen- 
sation of divine Love, spiritual man and his spiritual 
senses are drinking in the nature and essence of the indi- 
vidual infinite. A sinful sense is incompetent to understand 
the realities of being, — that Life is God, and that man 
is in His image and likeness. A sinner can take no cog- 
nizance of the noumenon or the phenomena of Spirit; 
but leaving sin, sense rises to the fulness of the stature of 
man in Christ. 

Person is formed after the manner of mortal man, so 



20 NO AND YES 

far as he can conceive of personality. Limitless person- 
ality is inconceivable. His person and perfection are 
neither self-created, nor discerned through imperfection; 
and of God as a person, human reason, imagination, and 
revelation give us no knowledge. Error would fashion 
Deity in a manlike mould, while Truth is moulding a 
Godlike man. 

When the term divine Principle is used to signify Deity 
it may seem distant or cold, until better apprehended. 
This Principle is Mind, substance, Life, Truth, Love« 
When understood. Principle is found to be the only term 
that fully conveys the ideas of God, — one Mind, a perfect 
man, and divine Science. As the divine Principle is com- 
prehended, God's omnipotence and omnipresence will 
dawn on mortals, and the notion of an everywhere-present 
body — or of an infinite Mind starting from a finite body, 
and returning to it — will disappear. 

Ever-present Love must seem ever absent to ever-present 
selfishness or material sense. Hence this asking amiss 
and receiving not, and the common idolatry of man- 
worship. In divine Science, God is recognized as the 
only power, presence, and glory. 

Adam's mistiness and Satan's reasoning, ever since the 
flood, — when specimens of every kind emerged from the 
ark, — have run through the veins of all human philoso- 
phy. Human reason is a blind guide, a continued series 
of mortal hypotheses, antagonistic to Revelation and Sci- 
ence. It is continually straying into forbidden by-paths 



NO AND YES 21 

of sensualism, contrary to the life and teachings of Jesus 
and Paul, and the vision of the Apocalypse. Human 
philosophy has ninety-nine parts of error to the one- 
hundredth part of Truth, — an unsafe decoction for the 
race. The Science that Jesus demonstrated, whose views 
of Truth Confucius and Plato but dimly discerned. Science 
and Health interprets. It was not a search after wisdom; 
it was wisdom, and it grasped in spiritual law the uni- 
verse, — all time, space, immortality, thought, extension. 
This Science demonstrated the Principle of all phenomena, 
identity, individuality, law; and showed man as reflect- 
ing God and the divine capacity. Human philosophy 
would dethrone perfection, and substitute matter and evil 
for divine means and ends. 

Human philosophy has an undeveloped God, who un- 
folds Himself through material modes, wherein the human 
and divine mingle in the same realm and consciousness. 
This is rank infidelity; because by it we lose God's ways, 
and perpetuate the supposed power and reality of evil ad 
infinitum. Christian Science rends this veil in the pantheon 
of many gods, and reproduces the teachings of Jesus, whose 
philosophy is incontestable, bears the strain of time, and 
brings in the glories of eternity; "for other foundation 
can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.'* 

Divine philosophy is demonstrably the true idea of the 
Christ, wherein Principle heals and saves. A philosophy 
which cannot heal the sick has little resemblance to Sci- 
ence, and is, to say the least, like a cloud without rain, 



22 NO AND YES 

"driven about by every wind of doctrine." Such phi- 
losophy has certainly not touched the hem of the Christ 
garment. 

Leibnitz, Descartes, Fichte, Hegel, Spinoza, Bishop 
Berkeley, were once clothed with a "brief authority;'* 
but Berkeley ended his metaphysical theory with a treatise 
on the healing properties of tar-water, and Hegel was an 
inveterate snuff-taker. The circumlocution and cold cate- 
gories of Kant fail to improve the conditions of mortals, 
morally, spiritually, or physically. Such miscalled meta- 
physical systenis are reeds shaken by the wind. Com- 
pared with the inspired wisdom and infinite meaning of 
the Word of Truth, they are as moonbeams to the sun, or 
as Stygian night to the kindling dawn. 

Is There a Personal Devil? 

No man hath seen the person of good or of evil. Each 
is greater than the corporeality we behold. 

"He cast out devils J' This record shows that the term 
devil is generic, being used in the plural number. From 
this it follows that there is more than one devil. That 
Jesus cast several persons out of another person, is not 
stated, and is impossible. Hence the passage must refer 
to the evils which were cast out. 

Jesus defined devil as a mortal who is full of evil. "Have 
I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil f His 
definition of evil indicated his ability to cast it out. An 



NO AND YES 23 

incorrect concept of the nature of evil hinders the destruc- 
tion of evU. To conceive of God as resembling — in per- 
sonality, or form — the personality that Jesus condemned 
as devilish, is fraught with spiritual danger. Evil can 
neither grasp the prerogative of God nor make evil om- 
nipotent and omnipresent. 

Jesus said to Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan ;^^ but 
he to whom our Lord gave the keys of the kingdom could 
not have been wholly evil, and therefore was not a devil, 
after the accepted definition. Out of the Magdalen, Jesus 
cast seven devils; but not one person was named among 
them. According to Crabtree, these devils were the dis- 
eases Jesus cast out. 

The most eminent divines, in Europe and America, con- 
cede that the Scriptures have both a literal and a moral 
meaning. Which of the two is the more important to gain, 
— the literal or the moral sense of the word devil, — in 
order to cast out this devil? Evil is a quality, not an 
individual. 

As mortals, we need to discern the claims of evil, and to 
fight these claims, not as realities, but as illusions; but 
Deity can have no such warfare against Himself. Knowl- 
edge of a man's physical personality is not sufficient to 
inform us as to the amount of good or evil he possesses. 
Hence we cannot understand God or man, through the 
person of either. God is All-in-all; but He is definite and 
individual, the omnipresent and omniscient Mind; and 
man's individuality is God's own image and likeness, — 



24 NO AND YES 

even the immeasurable idea of divine Mind. In the 
Science of good, evil loses all place, person, and power. 

According to Spinoza's philosophy God is amplification. 
He is in all things, and therefore He is in evil in human 
thought. He is extension, of whatever character. Also, 
according to Spinoza, man is an animal vegetable, devel- 
oped through the lower orders of matter and mortal mind. 
All these vagaries are at variance with my system of meta- 
physics, which rests on God as One and All, and denies 
the actual existence of both matter and evil. According to 
false philosophy and scholastic theology, God is three 
persons in one person. By the same token, evil is not only 
as real as good, but much more real, since evil subordi- 
nates good in personality. 

The claims of evil become both less and more in Chris- 
tian Science, than in human philosophies or creeds: more, 
because the evil that is hidden by dogma and human rea- 
son is uncovered by Science; and less, because evil, being 
thus uncovered, is found out, and exposure is nine points 
of destruction. Then appears the grand verity of Chris- 
tian Science: namely, that evil has no claims and was 
never a claimant; for behold evil (or devil) is, as Jesus 
said, " a murderer from the beginning, and the truth abode 
not in him." 

There was never a moment in which evil was real. This 
great fact concerning all error brings with it another and 
more glorious truth, that good is supreme. As there is 
none beside Him, and He is all good, there can be no evil. 



NO AND YES 25 

Simply uttering this great thought is not enough! We 
must hve it, until God becomes the All and Only of our 
being. Having won through great tribulation this cardinal 
point of divine Science, St. Paul said, "But now we are 
delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were 
held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not 
in the oldness of the letter. ^^ 



Is Man a Person? 

Man is more than physical personality, or what we cog- 
nize through the material senses. Mind is more than mat- 
ter, even as the infinite idea of Truth is beyond a finite 
belief. Man outlives finite mortal definitions of himself, 
according to a law of "the survival of the fittest." Man is 
the eternal idea of his divine Principle, or Father. He is 
neither matter nor a mode of mortal mind, for he is spir- 
itual and eternal, an immortal mode of the divine Mind. 
Man is the image and likeness of God, coexistent and 
coeternal with him. 

Man is not absorbed in Deity; for he is forever individ- 
ual; but what this everlasting individuality is, remains to 
be learned. Mortals have not seen it. That which is born 
of the flesh is not man's eternal identity. Spiritual and 
immortal man alone is God's likeness, and that which is 
mortal is not man in a spiritually scientific sense. A 
material, sinful mortal is but the counterfeit of immortal 
man. 



26 NO AND YES 

The mind-quacks believe that mortal man is identical 
with immortal man, and that the immortal is inside the 
mortal; that good and evil blend; that matter and Spirit 
are one; and that Soul, or Spirit, is subdivided into spirits, 
or souls, — alia^ gods. This infantile talk about Mind- 
healing is no more identical with Christian Science than 
the babe is identical with the adult, or the human belief 
resembles the divine idea. Hence it is impossible for those 
holding such material and mortal views to demonstrate 
my metaphysics. Theirs is the sensuous thought, which 
brings forth its own sensuous conception. Mine is the 
soiritual idea which transfigures thought. 

All real being represents God, and is in Him. In this 
Science of being, man can no more relapse or collapse 
from perfection, than his divine Principle, or Father, can 
fall out of Himself into something below infinitude. Man's 
real ego, or selfhood, is goodness. If man's individuality 
were evil, he would be annihilated, for evil is self-destroying. 

Man's individual being must reflect the supreme indi- 
vidual Being, to be His image and likeness; and this 
individuality never originated in molecule, corpuscle, ma- 
teriality, or mortality. God holds man in the eternal 
bonds of Science, — in the immutable harmony of divine 
law. Man is a celestial; and in the spiritual universe 
he is forever individual and forever harmonious. "If 
God so clothe the grass of the field, . . . shall He not 
much more clothe you, ye of little faith?" 

Sin must be obsolete, — dust returning to dust, noth- 



NO AND YES 27 

ingness to nothingness. Sin is not Mind; it is but the sup- 
position that there is more than one Mind. It issues 
a false claim; and the claim, being worthless, is in reality- 
no claim whatever. Matter is not Mind, to claim aught; 
but Mind is God, and evil finds no place in good. When 
we get near enough to God to see this, the springtide 
of Truth in Christian Science will burst upon us in the 
similitude of the Apocalyptic pictures. No night will be 
there, and there will be no more sea. There will be no 
need of the sun, for Spirit will be the light of the city, and 
matter will be proved a myth. Until centuries pass, and 
this vision of Truth is fully interpreted by divine Science, 
this prophecy will be scoffed at; but it is just as veritable 
now as it can be then. Science, divine Science, presents 
the grand and eternal verities of God and man as the 
divine Miad and that Mind's idea. 

Mortal man is the antipode of immortal man, and the 
two should not be confounded. Bishop Foster said, in a 
lecture in Boston, "No man living hath yet seen man." 
This material sinful personality, which we misname man, 
is what St. Paul terms "the old man and his deeds,'' to 
be "put off." 

Who can say what the absolute personality of God or 
man is? Who living hath seen God or a perfect man? 
In presence of such thoughts take off thy shoes and 
tread lightly, for this is holy ground. Surely the probation 
of mortals must go on after the change called death, that 
they may learn the definition of immortal being; or else 



28 NO AND YES 

their present mistakes would extinguish human existence. 
How long this false sense remains after the transition called 
death, no mortal knoweth; but this is sure, that the mists 
of error, sooner or later, will melt in the fervent heat of 
suffering, mortality will burst the barriers of sense, and 
man be found perfect and eternal. Of his intermediate 
conditions — the purifying processes and terrible revolu- 
tions necessary to effect this end — I am ignorant. 

Inasmuch as these momentous facts in the Science of 
being must be learned some time, now is the most accept- 
able time for beginning the lesson. If Science is pointing 
the way, and is found to bring with it health, holiness, and 
immortality, then to-day is none too soon for entering this 
path. The proof that Christian Science is the way of sal- 
vation given by Christ, I consider well established. The 
present, as well as the future, reveals the fact that Truth 
is never understood too soon. 

Has Truth, as demonstrated by Jesus, reappeared? 
Study Christian Science and practise it, and you will 
know that Truth has reappeared. What is demonstrably 
true cannot be gainsaid; but getting the letter and omitting 
the spirit of this Science is neither the comprehension of 
its Principle nor the practice of its Life. 

Has Man a Soul? 

The Scriptures inform us that "the soul that sinneth, 
it shall die.^' Here soul means sense and organic life; and 



NO AND YES 29 

this passage refers to the Jewish law, that a mortal should 
be put to death for his own sin, but not for another's. 
Not Soul, but mortal sense, sins and dies. Immortal man 
has immortal Soul and a deathless sense of being. Mortal 
man has but a false sense of Soul and body. He believes 
that Spirit, or Soul, exists in matter. This is pantheism, 
and is not the Science of Soul. The mind-quacks have 
so slight a knowledge of Soul that they believe material 
and sinning sense to be soul; and then they doctor this 
soul as if it were not even a material sense. 

In Dr. Gordon's sermon on The Ministry of Healing, 
he said, "The forgiven soul in a sick body is not half a 
man." Is this pantheistic statement sound theology, — 
that Soul is in matter, and the immortal part of man a sin- 
ner? Is not this a disparagement of the person of man and 
a denial of God's power? Better far that we impute such 
doctrines to mortal opinion than to the divine Word. 

To my sense, such a statement is a shocking reflection 
on the divine power. A mortal pardoned by God is not 
sick, he is made whole. He in whom sin, disease, and 
death are destroyed, is more than a fraction of himself. 
Such sermons, though clad in soft raiment, are spirit- 
less waifs, literary driftwood on the ocean of thought; 
while Truth walks triumphantly over the waves of sin 
sickness, and death. 



30 NO AND YES 



Is Sin Forgiven? 

The law of Life and Truth is the law of Christ, destroy- 
ing all sense of sin and death. It does more than forgive 
the false sense named sin, for it pursues and punishes it, 
and will not let sin go until it is destroyed, — until nothing 
is left to be forgiven, to suffer, or to be punished. For- 
given thus, sickness and sin have no relapse. God's law 
reaches and destroys evil by virtue of the allness of God. 

He need not know the evil He destroys, any more than 
the legislator need know the criminal who is punished by 
the law enacted. God's law is in three words, " I am All; " 
and this perfect law is ever present to rebuke any claim 
of another law. God pities our woes with the love of a 
Father for His child, — not by becoming human, and 
knowing sin, or naught, but by removing our knowledge 
of what is not. He could not destroy our woes totally 
if He possessed any knowledge of them. His sympathy 
is divine, not human. It is Truth's knowledge of its own 
infinitude which forbids the genuine existence of even 
a claim to error. This knowledge is light wherein there 
is no darkness, — not light holding darkness within itself. 
The consciousness of light is like the eternal law of God, 
revealing Him and nothing else. 

Sympathy with sin, sorrow, and sickness would dethrone 
God as Truth, for Truth has no sympathy for error. In 
Science, the cure of the sick demonstrates this grand 



NO AND YES 31 

verity of Christian Science, that you cannot eradicate dis- 
ease if you admit that God sends it or sees it. Material 
and mortal mind-healing (so-called) has for ages been 
a pretender, but has not healed mortals; and they are 
yet sick and sinful. 

Disease and sin appear to-day in subtler forms than 
they did yesterday. They progress and will multiply into 
worse forms, imtil it is understood that disease and sin are 
unreal, unknown to Truth, and never actual persons or 
real facts. 

Our phraseology varies. To me divine pardon is that 
divine presence which is the sure destruction of sin; and 
I insist on the destruction of sin as the only full proof of 
its pardon. "For this purpose the Son of God was mani- 
fested, that he might destroy the works of the devil'' 
(1 John iii. 8). 

Jesus cast out evils, mediating between what is and is 
not, until a perfect consciousness is attained. He healed 
disease as he healed sin; but he treated them both, 
not as in or of matter, but as mortal beliefs to be 
exterminated. Physical and mental healing were one 
and the same with this master Metaphysician. If the 
evils called sin, sickness, and death had been forgiven 
in the generally accepted sense, they would have returned, 
to be again forgiven; but Jesus said to disease: "Come 
out of him, and enter no more into him.'' He said also: 
"If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death;" 
and "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound 



32 NO AND YES 

in heaven." The misinterpretation of such passages has 
retarded the progress of Christianity and the spirituali- 
zation of the race. 

A magistrate's pardon may encourage a criminal to 
repeat the offense; because forgiveness, in the popular 
sense of the word, can neither extinguish a crime nor the 
motives leading to it. The belief in sin — its pleasure, 
pain, or power — must suffer, until it is self-destroyed. 
"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.'' 

Is There any such Thing as Sin? 

Frequently when I touch this subject my meaning is 
ignorantly or maliciously misconstrued. Christian Science 
Mind-healing lifts with a steady arm, and cleaves sin with 
a broad battle-axe. It gives the lie to sin, in the spirit of 
Truth; but other theories make sin true. Jesus declared 
that the devil was "a liar, and the father of it." A lie is 
negation, — alias nothing, or the opposite of something. 
Good is great and real. Hence its opposite, named evil, 
must be small and unreal. When this sense is attained, 
we shall no longer be the servants of sin, and shall cease 
to love it. 

The domination of good destroys the sense of evil. To 
illustrate: It seems a great evil to belie and belittle Chris- 
tian Science, and persecute a Cause which is healing its 
thousands and rapidly diminishing the percentage of sin. 
But reduce this evil to its lowest terms, nothing, and slander 



NO AND YES 33 

loses its power to harm; for even the wrath of man shall 
praise Him. The reduction of evil, in Science, gives the 
dominance to God, and must lead us to bless those who 
curse, that thus we may overcome evil with good. 

If the Bible and my work Science and Health had their 
rightful place in schools of learning, they would revolu- 
tionize the world by advancing the kingdom of Christ. 
It requires sacrifice, struggle, prayer, and watchfulness 
to understand and demonstrate what these volumes teach, 
because they involve divine Science, with fixed Principle, 
a given rule, and unmistakable proof. 

Is There no Sacrificial Atonement? 

Self-sacrifice is the highway to heaven. The sacri- 
fice of our blessed Lord is undeniable, and it was a million 
times greater than the brief agony of the cross; for that 
would have been insufficient to insure the glory his sacri- 
fice brought and the good it wrought. The spilling of 
human blood was inadequate to represent the blood of 
Christ, the outpouring love that sustains man's at-one- 
ment with God; though shedding human blood brought 
to light the efficacy of divine Life and Love and its power 
over death. Jesus' sacrifice stands preeminently amidst 
physical suffering and human woe. The glory of human 
life is in overcoming sickness, sin, and death. Jesus suf- 
fered for all mortals to bring in this glory; and his pur- 
pose was to show them that the way out of the flesh, out 



34 NO AND YES 

of the delusion of all human error, must be through the 
baptism of suffering, leading up to health, harmony, and 
heaven. 

We shall leave the ceremonial law when we gain the 
truer sense of following Christ in spirit, and we shall no 
longer venture to materialize the spiritual and infinite 
meaning and efficacy of Truth and Love, and the sacrifice 
that Jesus made for us, by commemorating his death 
with a material rite. Jesus said: "The hour cometh, and 
now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father 
in spirit and in truth." They drink the cup of Christ and 
are baptized in the purification of persecution who discern 
his true merit, — the unseen glory of suffering for others. 
Physical torture affords but a slight illustration of the 
pangs which come to one upon whom the world of sense 
falls with its leaden weight in the endeavor to crush out 
of a career its divine destiny. 

The blood of Christ speaketh better things than that 
of Abel. The real atonement — so infinitely beyond the 
heathen conception that God requires human blood to 
propitiate His justice and bring His mercy — needs to be 
understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet 
discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to 
the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of 
uplifted humanity, — this is the deep significance of the 
blood of Christ. Nameless woe, everlasting victories, are 
the blood, the vital currents of Christ Jesus' life, purchas- 
ing the freedom of mortals from sin and death. 



NO AND YES 35 

This blood of Jesus is everything to human hope and 
faith. Without it, how poor the precedents of Christian- 
ity! What manner of Science were Christian Science 
without the power to demonstrate the Principle of such 
Life; and what hope have mortals but through deep hu- 
mility and adoration to reach the imderstanding of this 
Principle! When human struggles cease, and mortals 
yield lovingly to the purpose of divine Love, there will be 
no more sickness, sorrow, sin, and death. He who pointed 
the way of Life conquered also the drear subtlety of death. 

It was not to appease the wrath of God, but to show the 
allness of Love and the nothingness of hate, sin, and death, 
that Jesus suffered. He lived that we also might live. He 
suffered, to show mortals the awful price paid by sin, and 
how to avoid paying it. He atoned for the terrible un- 
reality of a supposed existence apart from God. He 
suffered because of the shocking human idolatry that 
presupposes Life, substance, Soul, and intelligence in 
matter, — which is the antipode of God, and yet governs 
mankind. The glorious truth of being — namely, that 
God is the only Mind, Life, substance. Soul — needs no 
reconciliation with God, for it is one with Him now and 
forever. 

Jesus came announcing Truth, and saying not only "the 
kingdom of God is at hand," but "the kingdom of God 
is within you." Hence there is no sin, for God's kingdom 
is everywhere and supreme, and it follows that the human 
kingdom is nowhere,, and must be unreal. Jesus taught 



36 NO AND YES 

and demonstrated the infinite as one, and not as two. 
He did not teach that there are two deities, — one in- 
finite and the other finite; for that would be impossible. 
He knew God as infinite, and therefore as the All-in-all; 
and we shall know this truth when we awake in the divine 
likeness. Jesus^ true and conscious being never left 
heaven for earth. It abode forever above, even while 
mortals believed it was here. He once spoke of himself 
(John iii. 13) as "the Son of man which is in heaven,^^ — 
remarkable words, as wholly opposed to the popular view 
of Jesus^ nature. 

The real Christ was unconscious of matter, of sin, 
disease, and death, and was conscious only of God, of 
good, of eternal Life, and harmony. Hence the human 
Jesus had a resort to his higher self and relation to the 
Father, and there could find rest from unreal trials in 
the conscious reality and royalty of his being, — holding 
the mortal as unreal, and the divine as real. It was this 
retreat from material to spiritual selfhood which recuper- 
ated him for triumph over sin, sickness, and death. Had 
he been as conscious of these evils as he was of God, 
wherein there is no consciousness of human error, Jesus 
could not have resisted them; nor could he have conquered 
the malice of his foes, rolled away the stone from the 
sepulchre, and risen from human sense to a higher con- 
cept than that in which he appeared at his birth. 

Mankind's concept of Jesus was a babe born in a manger, 
even while the divine and ideal Christ was the Son of God, 



NO AND YES 37 

spiritual and eternal. In human conception God's off- 
spring had to grow, develop; but in Science his divine 
nature and manhood were forever complete, and dwelt 
forever in the Father. Jesus said, "Ye do err, not know- 
ing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.'' Mortal thought 
gives the eternal God and infinite consciousness the license 
of a short-lived sinner, to begin and end, to know both 
evil and good; when evil is temporal and God is eternal, — 
and when, as a sphere of Mind, He cannot know begin- 
ning or end. 

The spiritual interpretation of the vicarious atonement 
of Jesus, in Christian Science, unfolds the full-orbed glory 
of that event; but to regard this wonder of glory, this 
most marvellous demonstration, as a personal and material 
bloodgiving — or as a proof that sin is known to the 
divine Mind, and that what is unlike God demands His 
continual presence, knowledge, and power, to meet and 
master it — would make the atonement to be less than 
the at'One-ment, whereby the work of Jesus would lose 
its efficacy and lack the "signs following." 

From Genesis to Revelation the Scriptures teach an in- 
finite God, and none beside Him; and on this basis 
Messiah and prophet saved the sinner and raised the dead, 
— uplifting the human understanding, buried in a false 
sense of being. Jesus rendered null and void whatever 
is unlike God; but he could not have done this if error 
and sin existed in the Mind of God. What God knows, 
He also predestinates; and it must be fulfilled. Jesus 



38 NO AND YES 

proved to perfection, so far as this could be done in that 
age, what Christian Science is to-day proving in a small 
degree, — the falsity of the evidence of the material senses 
that sin, sickness, and death are sensible claims, and that 
God substantiates their evidence by knowing their claim. 
He established the only true idealism on the basis that God 
is All, and He is good, and good is Spirit; hence there is 
no intelligent sin, evil mind or matter: and this is the only 
true philosophy and realism. This divine mystery of 
godliness was the rock of Truth, on which he built his 
Church of the new-born, against which the gates of hell 
cannot prevail. 

This Truth is the rock which the builders rejected; but 
"the same is become the head of the corner.'' This is 
the chief corner-stone, the basis and support of creation, 
the interpreter of one God, the infinity and unity of good. 

In proportion as mortals approximate the understand- 
ing of Christian Science, they take hold of harmony, and 
material incumbrance disappears. Having one God, one 
Mind, one consciousness, — which includes only His own 
nature, — and loving your neighbor as yourself, constitute 
Christian Science, which must demonstrate the nothing- 
ness of any other state or stage of being. 

Is There no Intercessory Prayer? 

All prayer that is desire is intercessory; but kindling 
desire loses a part of its purest spirituality if the lips try to 



NO AND YES 39 

express it. It is a truism that we can think more lucidly 
and profoundly than we can write or speak. The silent 
intercession and unvoiced imploring is an honest and po- 
tent prayer to heal and save. The audible prayer may be 
offered to be heard of men, though ostensibly to catch 
God's ear, — after the fashion of BaaFs prophets, — by 
speaking loud enough to be heard; but when the heart 
prays, and not the lips, no dishonesty or vanity influences 
the petition. 

Prophet and apostle have glorified God in secret prayer, 
and He has rewarded them openly. Prayer can neither 
change God, nor bring His designs into mortal modes; but 
it can and does change our modes and our false sense of 
Life, Love, and Truth, uplifting us to Him. Such prayer 
humiliates, purifies, and quickens activity, in the direction 
that is unerring. 

True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to 
love, and to include all mankind in one affection. Prayer 
is the utilization of the love wherewith He loves us. Prayer 
begets an awakened desire to be and do good. It makes 
new and scientific discoveries of God, of His goodness and 
power. It shows us more clearly than we saw before, 
what we already have and are; and most of all, it shows 
us what God is. Advancing in this light, we reflect it; 
and this light reveals the pure Mind-pictures, in silent 
prayer, even as photography grasps the solar light to por- 
tray the face of pleasant thought. 

What but silent prayer can meet the demand, ^^Pray 



40 NO AND YES 

without ceasing"? The apostle James said: "Ye ask, 
and receive not, because ye ask amiss, to consume it on 
your lusts/' Because of vanity and self-righteousness, 
mortals seek, and expect to receive, a material sense of 
approval; and they expect also what is impossible, — a 
material and mortal sense of spiritual and immortal 
Truth. 

It is sometimes wise to hide from dull and base ears the 
pure pearls of awakened consciousness, lest your pearls 
be trampled upon. Words may belie desire, and pour 
forth a hypocrite's prayer; but thoughts are our honest 
conviction. I have no objection to audible prayer of the 
right kind; but the inaudible is more eflFectual. 

I instruct my students to pursue their mental ministra- 
tions very sacredly, and never to touch the human thought 
save to issues of Truth; never to trespass mentally on in- 
dividual rights; never to take away the rights, but only 
the wrongs of mankind. Otherwise they forfeit their 
ability to heal in Science. Only when sickness, sin, and 
fear obstruct the harmony of Mind and body, is it right 
for one mind to meddle with another mind, and control 
aright the thought struggling for freedom. 

It is Truth and Love that cast out fear and heal the sick, 
and mankind are better because of this. If a change in 
the religious views of the patient comes with the change to 
health, our Father has done this; for the human mind 
and body are made better only by divine influence. 



NO AND YES 41 



Should Christians Beware of Christian 
Science? 

History repeats itself. The Pharisees of old warned 
the people to beware of Jesus, and contemptuously called 
him "this fellow." Jesus said, "For which of these 
works do ye stone me?" as much as to ask, Is it the 
work most derided and envied that is most acceptable to 
God? Not that he would cease to do the will of his Father 
on account of persecution, but he would repeat his work 
to the best advantage for mankind and the glory of his 
Father. 

There are sinners in all societies, and it is vain to look 
for perfection in churches or associations. The life of 
Christ is the perfect example; and to compare mortal 
lives with this model is to subject them to severe scrutiny. 
Without question, the subtlest forms of sin are trying to 
force the doors of Science and enter in; but this white 
sanctuary will never admit such as come to steal and to 
rob. Through long ages people have slumbered over 
Christ's commands, " Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the gospel;" "Heal the sick, cast out devils;" and now 
the Church seems almost chagrined that by new discoveries 
of Truth sin is losing prestige and power. 

The Rev. Dr. A. J. Gordon, a Boston Baptist clergyman, 
said in a sermon: "The prayer of faith shall save the 
sick, and it is doing it to-day; and as the faith of the Church 



42 NO AND YES 

increases, and Christians more and more learn their duty 
to beheve all things written in the Scriptures, will such 
manifestations of God's power increase among us/' Such 
sentiments are wholesome avowals of Christian Science. 
God is not unable or unmlling to heal, and mortals are not 
compelled to have other gods before Him, and employ 
material forms to meet a mental want. The divine Spirit 
supplies all human needs. Jesus said to the sick, "Thy 
sins are forgiven thee; rise up and walk!'' God's pardon 
is the destruction of all "the ills that flesh is heir to." 

All power belongs to God; and it is not in all the vain 
power of dogma and philosophy to dispossess the divine 
Mind of healing power, or to cast out error with error, 
even in the name and for the sake of Christ, and so heal 
the sick. While Science is engulfing error in bottomless 
oblivion, the material senses would enthrone error as om- 
nipotent and omnipresent, with power to determine the 
fact and fate to being. It is said that the devil is the ape 
of God. The lie of evil holds its own by declaring itself 
both true and good. The path of Christian Science is be- 
set with false claimants, aping its virtues, but cleaving to 
their own vices. Denial of the authorship of "Science 
and Health with Key to the Scriptures" would make a 
lie the author of Truth, and so make Truth itself a lie. 

A distinguished clergyman came to be healed. He said: 
" I am suffering from nervous prostration, and have to eat 
beefsteak and drink strong coffee to support me through 
a sermon." Here a skeptic might well ask if the atone- 



NO AND YES 43 

ment had lost its efficacy for him, and if Christ's power to 
heal was not equal to the power of daily meat and drink. 
The power of Truth is not contingent on matter. Our 
Master said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest/' Truth rebukes 
error; and whether stall-fed or famishing, theology needs 
Truth to stimulate and sustain a good sermon. 

A lady said: "Only He who knows all things can esti- 
mate the good your books are doing." 

A distinguished Doctor of Divinity said: "Your book 
leavens my sermons." 

The following extract from a letter is a specimen of 
those received daily: "Your book Science and Health is 
healing the sick, binding up the broken-hearted, preach- 
ing deliverance to the captive, convicting the infidel, alarm- 
ing the hypocrite, and quickening the Christian." 

Christian Science Mind-healing is dishonored by those 
who take it up from mercenary motives, for wealth and 
fame, or think to build a baseless fabric of their own on 
another's foundation. They cannot put the "new wine 
into old bottles;" they can never engraft Truth into error. 
Such students come to my College to learn a system which 
they go away to disgrace. Stealing or garbling my state- 
ments of Mind-science will never prevent or reconstruct 
the wrecks of "i^m^" and help humanity. 

Science often suffers blame through the sheer ignorance 
of people, while envy and hatred bark and bite at its heels. 
A man's inability to heal, on the Principle of Christian 



44 NO AND YES 

Science, substantiates his ignorance of its Principle and 
practice, and incapacitates him for correct comment. 
This failure should make him modest. 

Christian Science involves a new language, and a higher 
demonstration of medicine and religion. It is the "new 
tongue'^ of Truth, having its best interpretation in the 
power of Christianity to heal. My system of Mind-heal- 
ing swerves not from the highest ethics and from the spirit- 
ual goal. To climb up by some other way than Truth is 
to fall. Error has no hobby, however boldly ridden or 
brilliantly caparisoned, that can leap into the sanctum 
of Christian Science. 

In Queen Elizabeth's time Protestantism could sentence 
men to the dungeon or stake for their religion, and so 
abrogate the rights of conscience and choke the channels 
of God. Ecclesiastical tyranny muzzled the mouth lisping 
God's praise; and instead of healing, it palsied the weak 
hand outstretched to God. Progress, legitimate to the 
human race, pours the healing balm of Truth and Love 
into every wound. It reassures us that no Reign of Terror 
or rule of error will again unite Church and State, or re- 
enact, through the civil arm of government, the horrors of 
religious persecution. 

The Rev. S. E. Herrick, a Congregational clergyman of 
Boston, says: "Heretics of yesterday are martyrs to-day.'' 
In every age and clime, "On earth peace, good will to- 
ward men" must be the watchword of Christianity. 

Jesus said: "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven 



NO AND YES 45 

and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise 
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." 

St. Paul said that without charity we are "as sound- 
ing brass, or a tinkling cymbal;'' and he added: "Charity 
suflFereth long, and is kind; . . . doth not behave itself 
unseemly, . . . thinkethno evil, . . . but rejoiceth in the 
truth.'' 

To hinder the unfolding truth, to ostracize whatever 
uplifts mankind, is of course out of the question. Such an 
attempt indicates weakness, fear, or malice; and such 
efforts arise from a spiritual lack, felt, though unacknowl- 
edged. 

Let it not be heard in Boston that woman, "last at the 
cross and first at the sepulchre," has no rights which man 
is bound to respect. In natural law and in religion the 
right of woman to fill the highest measure of enlightened 
understanding and the highest places in government, is 
inalienable, and these rights are ably vindicated by the 
noblest of both sexes. This is woman's hour, with all its 
sweet amenities and its moral and religious reforms. 

Drifting into intellectual wrestlings, we should agree to 
disagree; and this harmony would anchor the Church in 
more spiritual latitudes, and so fulfil her destiny. 

Let the Word have free course and be glorified. The 
people clamor to leave cradle and swaddling-clothes. The 
spiritual status is urging its highest demands on mortals, 
and material history is drawing to a close. Truth cannot 
be stereotyped; it unfoldeth forever. "One on God's 



46 NO AND YES 

side is a majority;^' and "Lo, I am with you alway/"" is 
the pledge of the Master. 

The question now at issue is: Shall we have a prac- 
tical, spiritual Christianity, with its healing power, or 
shall we have material medicine and superficial religion? 
The advancing hope of the race, craving health and holi- 
ness, halts for a reply; and the reappearing Christ, whose 
life-giving understanding Christian Science imparts, must 
answer the constant inquiry: "Art thou he that should 
come?^^ Woman should not be ordered to the rear, or 
laid on the rack, for joining the overture of angels. Theo- 
logians descant pleasantly upon free moral agency; but 
they should begin by admitting individual rights. 

The author's ancestors were among the first settlers of 
New Hampshire. They reared there the Puritan standard 
of undefiled religion. As dutiful descendants of Puritans, 
let us lift their standard higher, rejoicing, as Paul did, 
that we are free horn. 

Man has a noble destiny; and the full-orbed significance 
of this destiny has dawned on the sick-bound and sin- 
enslaved. For the unfolding of this upward tendency to 
health, greatness, and goodness, I shall continue to labor 
and wait. 



The University Press, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



WORKS ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 

WRITTEN BY MARY BAKER EDDY 



SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE 
SCRIPTURES 

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MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS 

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THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST, 
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CONCORDANCE TO SCIENCE AND HEALTH 

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WRITINGS OTHER THAN SCIENCE AND 
HEALTH 

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CHRIST AND CHRISTMAS 

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WORKS ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 
CHRISTIAN HEALING AND OTHER WRITINGS 

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CHURCH MANUAL 

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RETROSPECTION AND INTROSPECTION 

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UNITY OF GOOD 

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PULPIT AND PRESS 

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NO AND YES 

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MESSAGES TO THE MOTHER CHURCH 

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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE versus PANTHEISM 

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CHRISTIAN HEALING, AND THE PEOPLE'S 
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FEED MY SHEEP 

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